Background
For my corpus, I chose 10-15 movies (from the last decade) for each movie genre, based on track-size. The primary genre label for each movie is based on information form the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).
Action
• Atomic blonde • Edge of tomorrow • Fast five/furious 7 • Hanna • John wick(s) • Kingsman: the secret service • Mad max: fury road • Mission impossible: fallout • Avengers: end game • Tenet • X-Men • Inception
Romance - Drama
• Call me by your name • Before midnight • Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind • Pride & prejudice • The notebook • The fault in our stars • Atonement • The theory of everything • The age of Adaline • Brokeback mountain • The guernsey literary
Horror
• Get out • The lighthouse • A quiet place • The conjuring • Upgrade • Split • Hereditary • Doctor sleep • IT
Comedy
• The nice guys • This is the end • They came together • Bridesmades • Hunt for the wilderpeople • The 40 year old virgin • The big sick • Scott pilgrim vs the world • 21 jump street • The way, way back • Girls trip • Crazy rich Asians • American hustle • Pitch perfect • Wet hot American summer • Napoleon dynamite
Can we predict movie genre based on just the film music?
The full emotional effect of a movie is mainly based on the music played, in combination with the visual information. Typical movie genres are romance, comedy, horror and action. From these movie genres, what musical features contain the most information? Emotions are key elements in these movie genres. In romantic drama’s, emotions like ‘loving’ en ‘sense of longing’ are the main characteristics, but also ‘sadness’.In horror movies, fear and anxiety are the main emotions expressed in music. Dark overtones will be present. In action movies, emotions with high intensity like excitement are essential. In feelgood-comedy movies, ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’ are the main emotions, so these tracks will contain a lot of musical elements from ‘happy’ music like major tones.
Expectations
A horror movie will be defined as a movie that seeks to scare or unsettle the audience. I expect that this music is mostly written in the minor key. Music in horror movies wobbles and sound deliberately out of tune. For example, a lot of glissandi on violins (the screening upward). Pitch will be destabilized and pitch drops are used to stress the ‘unexpected’. One of the most iconic sounds, is the sudden sforzando tutti crash, designed to shock the audience instantly. It happens often in the midst of a musical silence, or after a pedal note.
Key features:
• Atonality • Pitch destabilization (‘deformed’ sounds) • Spiky motif • sforzando tutti and glissando • Horror cue: E (flat) Minor • Sudden silence • Low valence
Romantic dramas, generally, contain both ‘loving feelings’ and ‘sadness’, that is why this genre probably will oscillate between music written in both the major and minor key.
Key features:
• Slow pace • Light tones • Longline and lyrical melodies • Medium valence: equal major and minor • Timbre: woodwind instruments, piano and harp
The action movie offers thrills (e.g. shooting) and spectacle (e.g. explosions).
Key features:
• Fast tempo • High staccato • High pitch repetition • Timbre: brass and percussion instruments • Loud songs
Comedy movies are overall very happy. Happy tunes are written in the major key, are louder than other genres and probably more danceable with a high valence.
Key features:
• Constant major • High loudness and energy • High pitch repetition • Timbre: Piano, strings instruments, few harmonics
• Loud songs • High valence
(I am still not sure how to make move genre predictions of other movies than my corpus, this is more difficult than I thought it would be)
In what way does the film music from different movie genres differ, based on the emotional quadrant? [track-level-features]
This graphic shows the emotional quadrant of tracks played in movies from movie genres horror, action, feelgood-comedy and romance/drama. There is a clear distinction of the horror and action genres, where the tracks are mainly displayed on very low valence values. The tracks from horror movies are in the depressing / sad section of the emotional quadrant graph, with a lot of minor songs and are overall very ‘quiet’. Tracks from action movies are more smeared out, but locate mainly in the angry / turbulent and depressing / sad sections of the graph. Surprisingly, the majority of these tracks do not seem to be very loud at all. Feelgood-comedy tracks are more scattered, but in comparison with the other genres, this genre has a lot of tracks in the happy / joyful section with more louder songs. The tracks of romantic drama’s are localized throughout the whole plot, but do have a low valence overall. Louder songs have bigger dots, and color represents the mode of the song.
Analaysis of one outlier [chroma-features]
Doll box (upper) is different than the majority of the horror film music. It has a relatively high valence for horror film music and is compared with teacup TV (lower), which has a very low valence. Doll box is written in major, with very high pitched, distinctive tones. This chord is the G#major(9) chord. The chromagram of teacup TV is more smeared out, because a lot of different tones are played at the same time, as well as very high and very low pitched sounds, throughout the whole track. This track is played in a minor key and sounds a bit out of tune.
Conclusion and Discussion
The results support the notion that high intensity movies like action and horror, have musical cues that are measurably different from the scores of movies with more measured expression of emotion, like comedy and romance.